Checking the Financial Aid Box

Checking the Financial Aid Box December 4 Checking the financial aid box on graduate school applications can indeed hurt your candidacy, as Ivy Coach Founder Bev Taylor notes in a Main Street article. Considering checking the financial aid box  on your graduate school applications? Perhaps reconsider! Bev Taylor, Founder of Ivy Coach, was recently featured in a Main Street article entitled Worker Going to Grad School? Heres How to Pay for Your Degree written by Kathryn Tuggle that we figured wed bring to the attention of our readers. The piece focuses on how graduate school applicants can help pay for their degrees such as through scholarships, corporate stipends and reimbursement, as well as fellowships and assistantships. But at Ivy Coach, we dont claim to be experts on financial aid. We are experts on how to get into colleges as well as graduate school programs. And Bev had a thing or two to say about financial aid as it relates to graduate school admission. As stated in the piece, Most working professionals headed to graduate school arent going to qualify for need-based financial aid, says Bev Taylor, founder and of Ivy Coach, a New York-based college consulting firm. If you fall into that category, avoid stating on your application that youre in need of financial aid. If you check that box, it could hurt your application, Taylor says. Colleges are not need-blind, theyre need-aware. If you already know you dont qualify for financial aid, why would you put that on your application? Whenever you ask for aid, youd better be worthy of the aid.  Students who completed their bachelors degree only recently  and arent earning a salary may qualify for graduate school financial aid, but professionals in the workforce will almost certainly make too much money to be eligible. Thats why they should try to secure merit money instead. If you can ace the MCAT, GRE, LSAT or GMAT, then you could get decent merit money if youre not applying to top tie r schools, she says. With a strong undergraduate GPA and excellent standardized test scores, its possible to get a full ride from a less-competitive graduate school.' The article goes on to quote Bev: In some cases, applicants with strong academics may face a tough choice: Taking a full-ride at a lower-tier school or paying for tuition at a top-tier school. Youre going to pay for prestige, Taylor says. Some people end up asking themselves, Can I afford to go where I really want to go? Many of my clients see the value of going to a top-tier school even when it costs more, because they want more job opportunities once they graduate.  Its no secret that many companies hire graduates only from the most prestigious programs. Companies like Goldman Sachs or McKenzie, they only hire Ivy League graduates or grads from schools like Stanford and MIT. This is what they want for their consultants bios. They want bragging rights just as much as mommy and daddy want bragging rights, she says. If youre interested in Ivy Coachs assistance with your graduate school applications, fill our our consult form to get started. We look forward to hearing from   you.